Saturday, January 4, 2014

Frigid Horseshoe Pond

Snow-covered days with blue skies are some of my favorite for shooting landscapes. It makes it easy to expose for the bright snow without losing the deep blues of the sky. Often times when shooting landscapes the foreground is too dark to properly expose without blowing out the sky to white(more of a problem with digital cameras). I think digital cameras would improve much more if people were more aware of dynamic range limitations than just focusing on the number of megapixels. Almost all cameras(even the ones in your smartphone) already have more than enough megapixels to look good on the internet. So unless you plan on printing your images("wait, people still do that!?") you'd be better served by larger dynamic range... Anyways, I'm rambling - it was cold yesterday but I went out shooting and hiking at Horseshoe Pond to take advantage of the beautiful day.

Scenes like this are always hard to capture - it was much prettier in person. A tripod, multiple exposures, and some Photoshop work would go a long way in a shot like this - but is was to cold to stand still for that amount of time...and I don't like sitting still for that amount of time on the computer either.
'Sun and Trees' Using a small aperture(f/22 in this case) give you the "starburst effect" on the sun. Again - having a tripod would be helpful - instead I just bumped up the ISO to 640 here.
"This Way" - Heritage Farms(Christmas Trees) in the back.
"White Snow, Blue Sky"

I was surprised by how many cross country skiers were out - must be the new thang.